sanctuary

Saturday, November 22, 2014

It's a fascinating photographic
collection at the Nelson-Atkins Museum in Kansas City. In 1867
photographer Alexander Gardner became part of the survey team for the
Union Pacific Railway. Gardner had once worked in New York for Mathew
Brady, who had produced so many iconic pictures of the Civil War.

While part of the exhibit contains
photographs of Kansas City in 1867-68, Lawrence, Kansas and other
areas, other photographs depict the myriad relations between the U.S.
military, white settlers and the Indians that lived in the region.
These are powerful images, both poignant and hypnotic. See “images.”

In 1868 Gardner went with the Indian
Peace Commission held in Fort Laramie, Wyoming. The Commission was
made up of people sympathetic to Indian culture and their way of life
and those that wanted a “final” solution. It was, however, the
beginning of the end for the Plains Indians.

The American Civil War was over and
the “frontier” was about to be opened up to European-Americans on
a vast scale. We were headed for the Pacific coast. (Still one of the
best accounts on how the railroad opened the West and its
consequences read Richard White's book Railroaded.)

A story for all of us in injun
country

This is not an American story or just
another sad tale about indigenous people worldwide, although it has
directly affected native populations for a long time. It's really
about values, economic systems and what we're willing to consider as
alternatives in the 21st century. See 'tar sands' and
accompanying video.

The U.S. military has used the
expression “going into injun country” for a long time when
embarking on our numerous military campaigns or entering an
especially dangerous area within a country where we're usually not
wanted. The problem is that more and more of us will likely be
considered “hostiles” living in injun country by those few
seeking some type of “final solution.”

Sunday, November 02, 2014

We are the rich. We own America. We
got it, God knows how, but we intend to keep it.

(Frederick Townsend Martin, a
member of New York's late 19th century upper class)

Listen to your betters

I have learned how to cultivate my
karma for success; a wealthy businessman told me. I've lost track of
all the articles I have read on numerous sites, including Linkedin,
about “making it.” Now I know how to write a resume so as to
avoid age discrimination and what clothes to wear for all occasions.

So many articles on how to get
rich, including pictures of beautiful people, beautiful mansions and
beautiful yachts and so little time. Mark Cuban told me he gets his
inspiration from reading Ayn Rand novels. There's hope. I read Ayn
Rand novels when I was in college.

I see in the near future a crisis
approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety
of my country.... Corporations have been enthroned and an era of
corruption in high places will follow....

(Abraham Lincoln, 1864)

Mirrors and smoke

My libertarian friends are fond of
reminding me that America is a republic not a democracy. I usually
thank them and only occasionally ask them if a republic can be
democratic. Certainly, our 18th century Founding Fathers,
a remarkable collection of human beings, were no democrats as we
understand the term in the 21st century.

For the creators of the
Constitution, they did not place “democracy” on a marble stand.
When they spoke of democracy they meant preventing”mob rule” and
the “triumph” of passion. Alexander Hamilton once remarked during
the Constitutional Convention of 1787 that, “Your 'people,' sir, is
nothing but a great beast.”

In the 21st century one
of our favorite Horatio Alger stories is the self-made billionaire
tale. It was Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's propaganda muse, that said,
“You tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will
eventually come to believe it.”

Our billionaires in the U.S.,
overwhelmingly, receive their education from elite or elitist
institutions, depending on your point of view, and a large percentage
have advanced degrees. (See Wealth-X and UBS Billionaire Census2014). It's actually a perpetuation of a class and most definitely
not the enlargement of an opportunity.

It's like when Hitler invaded
Poland in 1939.

(Stephen Schwarzman, CEO of
Blackstone, a private equity firm, in response to the Obama
administration proposal to close the 'carried interest loophole'
benefiting the very rich, 2011)

“My dear, here we must run as
fast as we can, just to stay in place.”

Yes, we are living in a
“wonder-land.” The information is readily available. For some it
might begin with Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas
Piketty. But there are many other sources less abstruse.

Corporate profits have risen five
times faster than wages, while the middle class has not seen its
wages rise in 15 years. College costs have risen 500 percent since
1985 while the consumer price index rose only 115 percent during the
same period. At Harvard 11 % of the students receive Pell grants,
while at the University of Texas 59% receive Pell grants.

Even with a less than perfect
Affordable Care Act (hardly a radical idea in the developed world),
health costs are going up, while family income is going down. The
rich, well, they are “different” from you and me. They have their
subsidies, which of course is a tax for everyone else.

Who loves you baby

I have seen examples of
“capitalism” in a small rum shop in Barbados, in an Indian market
outside of Quito, Ecuador and at a small hotel on the coast of
Venezuela. In my own family there are small business owners, who
employ people, pay taxes and who really do believe in responsibility
beyond themselves.

With the “millennials” well on
their way of becoming the new American serfs because of college debt
and a broken economic system, I have wondered even more if we
actually do believe in an educated citizenry, because freedom,
liberty and opportunity for all is supposedly, at the very least, in
our national interest.

Leaving aside for the moment
secondary and primary school education, why is college tuition not
paid for by its citizens? After all, we are seemingly happy to pay
for the education of a professional military officer class. I suppose
the question is mostly rhetorical.

Our republic is broken and nonsense
about Ayn Rand and “dressing” for success are the distracting
tales told by idiots and sociopaths.

The death of Sitting Bull removes
one of the obstacles to civilization. He was a greasy savage, who
rarely bathed and was liable at anytime to become infected with
vermin. During the whole of his life he entertained the remarkable
delusion that he was a free-born American with some rights in the
country of his ancestors.

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About Me

"We reached the old wolf in time to watch a fierce green fire dying in her eyes. I realized then, and have known ever since, that there was something new to me in those eyes--something known only to her and to the mountains." (Aldo Leopold, "Thinking Like a Mountain")
"We are the rich. We own America. We got it, God knows how, but we intend to keep it." (Frederick Townsend Martin, 19th century plutocrat)